English Level: G3 Supervisor: Anne Holm Course code: 2EN20E Examiner: Per Sivefors Numbers of credits: 15 Date of final seminar: 12 January 2018 The Fear of Mrs. Bates The Use of Psychoanalytical Aspects, Anticipation and Retrospection in Robert Bloch’s Psycho Rebecca Spolander Abstract This essay focuses on psychoanalytical notions in Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho. The theoretical framework is based on Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis. Slavoj Žižek’s idea that the house serves as a symbol of Freud’s concept of the Super-Ego, Ego and Id is presented and further developed. Moreover, it is exemplified how the idea of repression as a defense mechanism can be traced in the novel. It is then explained that repression is used as a tool for making the reader feel sympathy for Norman Bates. In addition, Wolfgang Iser’s reception theory is used to explain how Bloch uses gaps and pre-intentions in order to create anticipation and retrospection in the reader to produce suspense and horror. The intention is to prove that the attention to the psychological issues is what makes the monster of the novel more sympathetic and recognizable to us as readers. Thus, the result is that we position ourselves closer to the monster, which leaves us wondering if we could, due to our shared psychology, be monsters as well. Keywords Robert Bloch, Psycho, Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis, Super-Ego, Ego, Id, repression, Wolfgang Iser, reception theory, anticipation, retrospection Table of Contents 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 4 2 Psychoanalysis and Reception theory ..................................................................................... 6 3 Notions of the Super-Ego, the Ego and the Id in Bloch’s novel Psycho ............................... 11 4 Repression as a defense mechanism in the novel .................................................................. 17 5 Bloch’s use of gaps, anticipation and retrospection .............................................................. 20 6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 27 Works Cited .............................................................................................................................. 30 Spolander 4 1 Introduction “I think perhaps all of us go a little crazy at times” (Bloch 38). Norman Bates utters these words to Mary Crane, suggesting that even though we think we are in total control of our behavior, we can not ignore the fact that our mind is a complex construction which we sometimes lose control over. This essay explores how the attention to psychological issues creates a source of horror in Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho. The focus is also on how horror is produced in the process where the reader actively modifies his/her perception of Norman’s character. The theoretical framework is based on Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis; this theory will be complemented with Wolfgang Iser’s reception-theory. The aim is to, first, identify aspects of psychoanalysis, specifically the concept of Super-Ego, Ego and Id, as well as the idea of repression as a defense mechanism, and investigate how the reader might perceive Norman’s character through these. Then I will use Wolfgang Iser’s ‘reception theory’ to explain how through anticipation and retrospection the reader gradually acquire a greater understanding of Norman’s mind, which in turn produces suspense and horror. Psychoanalysis as a form of therapy aims at making the unconscious conscious. It is a process where the psychoanalyst explores the mind of the patient, by gradually revealing and realizing the unconscious matter. Therefore, psychoanalysis correlates with the function of reception-theory in how the reader takes the role of the analyst as he helps with completing the narrative and to make connections between events, thus gradually realizing the meaning of the literary text. In Psycho, the gaps and retrospection help the reader to gradually realize the true nature of Norman Bates as well as obtain a greater understanding of his intricate mind. As I suggest that the reader is, in a sense, diagnosing Norman through the reading experience, my use of Freud can be considered to be somewhat “folk psychological”. The novel Psycho is written by Robert Bloch, who was an American writer. The novel is narrated by a third-person omniscient point-of-view, where different chapters tell the story from different characters' perspectives, therefore the reader experiences the story from parallel points of view. Psycho tells the story of a young woman called Mary Crane who is on the run because she has stolen a large sum of money. On her way to her lover Sam Loomis, she stops at the Bates Motel which is run by Norman Bates. Bates lives with his dominant mother, named Norma Bates, in an old house close to the motel. At first, Norman seems like any other man, Spolander 5 but the reader soon finds out that he is really a very troubled person. At night, Bates’ mother comes into Mary’s room and murders her. A few days later, Mary’s sister Lila Crane, along with Sam and a private detective named Arbogast, drives to the Bates Motel in hopes of finding the now missing Mary. There, the truth is revealed – Norman’s mother has been dead for several years. It is Norman who has committed the murders at the house, dressed and acting as “Mother”. Psycho was first published in 1959, yet it still feels contemporary and has continued to intrigue and horrify us to this day. In 1960, Bloch’s novel was adapted into a movie of the same name by Alfred Hitchcock. The movie became a huge success and is today considered a classic; therefore, it is likely that Hitchcock’s movie is more well-known than Bloch’s novel. Most people would agree that Psycho belongs to the horror genre because it contains a vicious killer, a creepy setting and a grinning, shriveled corpse. The intention of the horror genre is to induce feelings of horror or terror upon its reader. Traditionally this is done by exposing the reader to mystical settings, scenes of gore and dark supernatural creatures and monsters. Bloch’s novel differs in that respect as the main source of horror is not the depiction of monsters and gore, instead, the horror effect is created by the reader's active participation in the reading process. Psycho is a popular subject for investigation among scholars and several studies have been carried out on both the novel and the movie. In the article “The Death-Mother in Psycho: Hitchcock, Femininity, and Queer Desire” David Greven examines the role of Norma Bates as the essential subject of horror. Similarly to this essay, Greven concludes that it is the fear of Norman’s mother that produces feelings of fear and horror. However, Greven’s study is primarily concerned with the concept of Mrs. Bates as a maternal figure and the character’s relevance to issues of femininity and queer sexuality. This essay only focuses on the use of the character of Mrs. Bates as a narrative tool for anticipation and deception; the character of Mrs. Bates is not itself the subject of the analysis. Furthermore, in her study “Coveting the Feminine: Victor Frankenstein, Norman Bates, and Buffalo Bill”, Diane Negra focuses on the split in Norman’s personality, which is also the focus of this essay. However, Negra uses Lacan as a framework when arguing that the split in Norman’s personality is produced due to the imposition of gender categories, while this analysis is based on Freud’s concept of the Super- Ego, Ego and Id and argues that the alter egos created is a symbol of said concept. What further separates this study from other studies is how the combination of psychoanalytic theory and Spolander 6 reception theory is used in combination to explain how the reader acquires knowledge of Norman’s monstrous mind and thus realize the novel’s main source of horror. I will argue that the attention to the psychological issues makes the monster more sympathetic and recognizable to the reader, which ultimately is the main source of horror. This response is produced in the process where the reader actively changes his/her perception of Norman from an ordinary man to monster. This would suggest that the novel will stay modern and contemporary as well as universally relatable. This aspiration to prove that Bloch portrays a character who is monstrous due to psychological aspects is also important because it widens our perception of the horror genre and what themes it involves. 2 Psychoanalysis and reception theory Psychoanalytic literary criticism builds on the techniques of psychoanalysis which is a form of therapy based on specific ideas of how the unconscious influences the human mind and the behavior. Teresa De Lauretis explains that even if psychoanalysis is drawn to the scientific discourse due to its theoretical construction, the focus on figurative meaning and language aligns it with literature (De Lauretis 114). De Lauretis further explains that literary analysis and psychoanalysis are similar processes. The intention of using literary analysis is to extract meaning and the message that the author is intending to convey by looking at, for example, symbols and metaphors. The psychoanalytical process works in a similar way; the aim of psychoanalysis is to expose the unconscious that affects the psychological processes by observing material effects, such as behavior (De Lauretis 114). The examination of psychoanalytical notions in the text focuses mainly on defense mechanisms, specifically on repression which is a key concept of this theory. Repression is a defense mechanism of suppressing instinctual demands (Freud, Psychopathology 324) or traumatic events (Freud, Metapsychology 147) which are forced out of the conscious mind and into the realm of the unconscious (Freud, Psychopathology 242). The focus is also on Freud's idea of the Super-Ego, Ego and Id which are the three parts, or realms into which Freud divided the structural model of the psyche (Introductory Lectures 104).